Welcome to the official blog for the WordPress Support team.
Need help with a WordPress issue? You can find help with your WordPress problem by posting in the support forums or asking on the #wordpress IRC channel.
Want to get involved?
Answering a question in the support forums or on IRC is one of the easiest ways to get started. Everyone knows the answer to something!
We have a detailed handbook to help contributors learn how to work with the forums and IRC.
Weekly Meetings
As well as discussing support issues here on the blog, we use Slack for group communication.
Our weekly meeting is held fortnightly on Thursday at 20:00 UTC, with agendas published below. The next will be at Thursday, 20:00 UTC(your time zone) in #forums on SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
The support guidelines serve as the guidestones for support moderators (and pluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party reviewers) in setting expectations around what is and what isn’t acceptable behavior.
The guidelines were last fully reviewed during WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. San Francisco in 2013, and a lot has happened in those 10 years. Some guidelines were added ad-hoc to account for timely situations, while others have just become dated, and may not necessarily reflect the current state of the WordPress user base, it’s surrounding ecosystem, or the outward facing opinion we wish to nurture.
The following is a collaborative effort in refining, simplifying, and clarifying the guidelines as they are today, into something that is both easier to understand for users, but also makes the job of those moderating much easier in the long term.
The proposal is available in a separate document, to make it easier to reading in an isolated (and easily comparable to the current iteration) manner.
Note that some changes would initially impact existing forum content. As these are new guidelines; once implemented, they will only relate to new content moving forward. The reasoning being that existing content were a product of the guidelines of their time, and moderating this existing content every time a guideline changes is just not something that can be done..
As these are a result of work during WordCamp Us 2023, if you are at the venue and wish to discuss something, please feel free to reach out and a summary of it will be posted as a comment here. Otherwise, please use the comment section below for feedback, or questions, if there are uncertainties as to why some guidelines may have been removed, amended, or added to, this helps ensure everyone that wants to can have their opinion voiced, and that the same response does not have to be repeated in private channels.
This is where news that are relevant or good to know for the team from across the community are brought up and shared.
Support guidelines and FAQ revamp
It’s been a while, and it has been mentioned a few times that there is a need for it, so without further ado the team brings you this years WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US Contributor DayContributor DayContributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. focus area #1: Updating the support guidelines.
The guidelines have a GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repository to make suggestions and collaborative work easier, both to provide suggestions ahead of time, but also during the day of contributor day.
The repository is available at https://github.com/WordPress/wporg-support-guidelines
The goal is to (ideally) simplify the guidelines and FAQ pages, both in terms of language used, but also in terms of length. For a non-exhaustive list, it is currently very wordy, and has unfortunately long since passed the point of being a “wall of text” that rarely gets read.
Checking in with international liaisons
This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.
There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!
Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, or just to let us know you’re doing OK!
We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.
For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.
This is where news that are relevant or good to know for the team from across the community are brought up and shared.
WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US 2023
The onboarding lead would be one, or more, individuals who are available throughout contributor day to help onboarding new contributors, streamlining that process and ensuring availability (which is often hard for a table lead to devote dedicated time to during the day).
We have a few seasoned contributors that will be participating, and will look to share the workload fairly between those who have the capacity.
New (betaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process.) moderator anonymity tool
As some may be aware, and some may not, a new (beta!) feature rolled out for moderators on the forums this past week 🎉
When writing a reply, there is now a checkbox that will allow you to post anonymously (to the users), under a unified “Support Moderator” user. Other moderators may still see who made the post though.
This will ensure that the team is both able to have the backing of “one voice” in difficult decisions, but also ensure that moderators are not required to post as them selves, and becoming potential targets for retaliation or abuse.
Note that the feature is still in beta, so it may still disclose who posted it somehow, until it’s been properly triaged, but it’s there and you’re able to experiment with it.
If you post as an anonymous moderator, you will still receive notifications of replies to the thread, which is also good to be aware of.
New workflows for discussing forum account actions
A new inbox set up for handling disputes and questions concerning things like flagged accounts.
The purpose of having a common inbox is to bring potentially heated or controversial discussions out of the pubic #forums channel, and also to give the users the ability to discuss their flagged status without being put in a negative light. (We all make mistakes, we can learn from them, and then it’s always nice to be able to do so privately.) In addition, it allows moderators to handle sensitive situations while remaining anonymous, which can in turn reduce potential mod harassment, or uncomfortable situations where a specific moderator is being targeted directly.
In addition, it allows the team to discuss information which may be considered private with individuals, without needing to worry about disclosure of private information in public channels.
WordPress 6.3 is near/here
With the upcoming release of WordPress 6.3, the team had a quick brainstorming session about which topics they believe users may need help with. It is shaping up to be a great release at this time, and only one item was brought up as likely to cause confusion, that being the renaming of Reusable blocks to Patterns.
Checking in with international liaisons
None of the teams international liaisons had any concerns or special events/news to share at this time.
The field guide has been published, are there items we should be extra aware of from a support perspective (or things you’ve tested and found that may not be obvious within the field guide)?
WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US 2023
This year we’ll have two predefined roles (if we have the volunteers to cover them):
Table lead
Onboarding lead
The table lead is generally there to help with any questions, get people into the flow of things, presenting the team, and a summary at the end of the day. This is a role that has been around for a while.
The onboarding lead is a newer role, and would be responsible for helping onboard any new contributors to the team throughout the day. This has historically also been covered by the table lead, but if we are able to split it up, it means there’s an easier way to focus our efforts and ensure the contributors that are attending get the best support ever!
Who will be attending, and if anyone feels that pull towards getting involved; Who would like to take part in either of the two predefined roles for the support team on this day (noting that it does not have to be a single person for either role as well)?
New (betaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process.) moderator anonymity tool
When moderators are responding on the forums, it is now possible for them to check a box that lets them post “anonymously”, under a unified “Support Moderator” account.
The account will have a little notice above it showing other moderators who made the reply, but no regular users.
Checking in with international liaisons
This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.
There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!
Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, or just to let us know you’re doing OK!
We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.
For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.
This is where news that are relevant or good to know for the team from across the community are brought up and shared.
Extended capabilities for international moderators
Some may have picked up on this already, as the metaMetaMeta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. commits are public, but in the spirit of transparency the team wishes to inform that the capabilities of moderators on the international forums (the ones directly under the main WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ domain) have been extended. This is to allow them to more directly handle spam and similar scenarios where extended capabilities may be needed.
Alongside this, improved audit logging for actions taken towards user-accounts have also been added. These are not publicly logged, and will not be, as doing so may potentially expose either users or moderators to potential retiliatory actions.
The first onboarding call for the contributor mentorship program has been concluded
If you’re unfamiliar with the new contributor mentorship program, it is a pilot project to help onboard new (and potential existing) contributors to various make teams, and give them more direct mentors that can help them navigate the hurdles that may come up when getting started in contributing. It’s a cool concept, and the support team is part of the pilot project (big shoutouts to the wonderful mentors!)
With the upcoming release of WordPress 6.3, the team had a quick brainstorming session about which topics they believe users may need help with. It is shaping up to be a great release at this time, and only one item was brought up as likely to cause confusion, that being the renaming of Reusable blocks to Patterns.
Checking in with international liaisons
None of the teams international liaisons had any concerns or special events/news to share at this time.
Karpe, Omar Sheriff – KENYA (Live from DY Patil Stadium, Mumbai)
Are you passionate about WordPress and eager to contribute to its forums? Do you enjoy helping others and solving challenges? If so, we have exciting news for you!
We are thrilled to announce that we will be hosting an exclusive onboarding call to introduce enthusiastic individuals like you to our Make Support team and its rewarding contributions to WordPress. Whether you’re a seasoned developer, a support expert, or a WordPress enthusiast with a desire to learn and grow, we welcome everyone to join our team.
The field guide has been published, are there items we should be extra aware of from a support perspective (or things you’ve tested and found that may not be obvious within the field guide)?
Extended capabilities for international moderators
The moderators on the international forums (the ones found on the base WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ domain) have been given the ability to more actively deal with spam accounts, giving them the ability to now also blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. the accounts to prevent further spam. This is particularly handy when any of the administrators may not be available due to time zones, or other engagements.
To account for the larger pool of users now able to perform more elevated moderator actions, improved audit logging has also been implemented.
Checking in with international liaisons
This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.
There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!
Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, or just to let us know you’re doing OK!
We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.
For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.
